The Mating of the Horses. TO THE- EDITOR.

Otago Witness, Issue 2504, 19 March 1902, Page 9

The Mating of the Horses. TO THE- EDITOR.

Su, — I remember some boys keeping soiur bantams which were great fighters. Notwithstanding this, they Tearcd lots of fine hardy chickens, but the good people got it into tlie.i heads that the boys were cockfighting, and ordered them to keep only one rooster. The company of little fowls had a frosYun of their own, but in thejr peaceful years they did not get» on nearly so well, then disappeared, and were foi gotten , and the only reason I lake it ur> iiow 13 to hang a theoiv on it

Perhaps the fighting was beneficial, foi it .■? almost the first clause in natural law that males should fight each other at the proper season. The first effect of this would be to pick out the best, but a second effect might be that the violent exercise was necessary {or the production of the best. There are many reasons for suspecting this, which nearly everyone can pick out for themselves. For instance, some hard-working wild creatures, though supplied with the best of food, wi}l not breed at all m idleness and captivity, or only breed such degenerate things that they can hardly live. The same may apply to the highest animals, for it is not uncommon for idle families to degenerate and die out, perhaps for the want of some rousing good exercise.

The fight is the best of all tests for thorough soundness, and it is Nature's pedigree book, which she takes caro to have always entered up, among wild animals at least, for she has laid their strongest impulses in that direction and armed many of them specially for the purpose of fighting , and the perfect liberty of wild am mals to do so may be one reason why they are so healthy compared with our tame ones No doubt they are the product of the bc-t males, but that csnnot be the whole reavi)', because we spare no pa.as or expense tc secure

"the very "best "horses lor sires, yet v/ccdy onef" ar« very common, while real gcod ones*, an" 1 - scarce-. This-suggests-thai-thefe-niay fee-soaM^-thing radically wrong in omvpla.n_bf lseopin& the sires in pampered idleness during the mating season. It ■is directly ' opposite ~t<\ ■JTature's plan, that is certain, for even halfwild horses will -like demons and g&lkrv about for a week, almost without eating 9 morsel — no pampered feeding with them nor beds of straw,— yet their progeny aTe notori> ously sound and hardy, though not. very handsome from our point of view. Perhaps, ifwar were to work the sires to their utmost and give them half the numbei of mates our present proportioj of weeds and good horses might be«-TeversecL And the same idea might be canned out with other animals.

The singing and dancing of birds and the various parades of non-fighters may be othe>. "plans lor inducing vigorous exercise at the proper time. Their very utmost may be what is required for the improvement of their race. We -know that- sniong some creatures hardships:, tend towards^ths production of males, and if this holds .good with 'the others, it is the key_£f^he whole position. ' A. great excess of males would eisur-e. them plenty of exercise; in their, teea ''competitions, rand c i;h.en only the most energeiic would reproduce, when, all would jog along improving." On the other hand, a.;" superabundance of food, which also.* implies* idleness, tends towards the production of too - many females, when all sorts of males can.^gel . their partners without the vigorous exe-rcise, and then the offspring of- the majority will ba . jogging down tbo hill. That may be why history tells us of so many nations that rose out of hardships and wen* down out of wealth 'and luxury. — I am, etc., E. H.

It would seem almost impossible that a little island in mid-ocean should suffer from drought, bvit the following extract from a ' letter of the Norfolk Island 'correspondent . of the Brisbane- Courier, dated February 12, . shows how general has been the want of rain: — "The drought which the island has just passed through was very sevcre^and at one time had a very serious aspect indeed; there was little or no grass for the grazing stock, nearly all the streams wevo dried up, and some of the wells, too, wera beginning to give oxit, but, fortunately, at the comli'encement of the present month we- had two days' steady rain, about two inches, which has done an immense amount of good, and altered the look of things considerably."

Late mails report that the Chevalier yon . Holzinger, vice-president 'of the Lower Austrian High Court for Criminal Cases, entered his office in the courthouse and shot himself . through the temples. No one heard the report of the revolver, but he was found dead by the servant who came at 8 o'clock _to clean the rooms. A paper was found lying on the table containing a few lines from the judge's own hand, saying that he took farewell of life out of fear of 'complete blindness. The suicide has caused an immense 6ensa-_ tion throughout Vienna, Her yon Holzinger having been, if not the most popular, at least the best-known judge during the last 20 years. More recently an indiscreet remark from the presidential chair about the Poles as a nation caused him to be passed over," and this and a recent rebuke by the Court of Cassation, which quashed one of his decisions as insufficiently based on law, hud as. much to do, it is believed, with his resolution to take his life, as the fear of becoming -blind. - ,